His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.

When grace combines with wrinkles, it is admirable. There is an indescribable light of dawn about intensely happy old age. . . . The young person is handsome, but the old, superb.

Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.

Are you afraid of the good you might do?

He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.